It falls apart on the street.

And this is what comes of the body;

It's put in a machine in a room.

And this is where the body goes

When it lives and it lives against odds.

With all of the other bodies

In long yellow halls, in the yellowing arteries

Of a building like a brain unfolding.

And these are the people who care

For the bodies;

A nut, a crank and a goddess

In the long yellow halls on a hill.

And here are the people, companions

Of the maimed; a boy in a coma

Whose mother comes to call

Every morning for five years. Boy in the tubes.

And the legless, the armless, the voiceless,

The brainless or the brain intact

In a body in a bed. And the smell.

Oh what is that smell I asked one day.

It is talcum powder, urine, saliva, decay.

And this is the way

The mind returns;

Not in leaps, not in bounds

But in doses. And what is chemical

And what is magical I cannot say.

But minds do mend, a little.

So this is the way the mind wanders

To memory, to words, to past half-wrong.

It is called aphasia, amnesia, spasticity

Which sound like muses of the most

Primitive arts. Not song, poetry, dance.

But talk. A thought. A step.

And what shall we say of the half-life?

Of the twilight, false dawn, the half wit?

It is this; the mind cannot stand being lost

And it goes in the dark to half truth.

Incompetent, mentally unbalanced, disturbed;

A world of workshops, occupational therapy

Board and care; I have stood in line

With the berserk and the lame.

I am the mind behind the mind in the body.

So this is the life in the margins;

Our nerves and our minds are the treasure.

Love and luck live alongside witless lack

in the back. Underneath.

And this is the truth of one street

Where the mind lies, and the other half

Walks alive. It is deep, hard, unthinkable.

I think of it every hour.

It is burden, it is caring, it is calling;

It is that other wheel when before

I had three. I do not know why burden

Is in the circle. I know minds are lost

And found and changed.  

  

 

 

In the heart there is a bell

And in the bell a hollow clapper

And in the clapper a little room

And in the room a blue cathedral

And in the cathedral an altar flame

And in the flame a voice, a song

And seven times all the night long

Seven songs, each song a rose

And in each rose a hurt, a hell

Lonely as a gargoyle squeak

Rising in waves to haunt; to speak

in gargles and gags of splinters and loss.

There is one way to keep off dying;

To turn to stone perfectly lying

But in each stone there lies a leaf

And in its veins traced belief

And in belief a well spun web

Of long dead spider; of all that's said

Beyond the sayings of lovers and friends

Lying in grass; Summer's demands;

Demands demeaning, demon driven

Spikes through granite, heaven

After heaven. There is no way for stone

To cover crack or ever spin

Web dust, wood lost, hearts bell

Hung silent. Wind will move

Light will steal

From sun to moon. I know a grove

Of trees and webs; of lying leaves.

This I know--what sings, unknown

And rings unseen and lights and weaves.

When I came here I heard a bell

And where you walk I hear it well.